The Epistle on Legal Theory

Chapter on Legal Disagreement

٤٠٥ 405 Chapter on Legal Disagreement If he asks, “Can you give me a different example of that?” I would say: A woman is informed that her husband has died. She fulfills the waiting period and then remarries. The new husband consummates the marriage, and then the first husband reappears alive: she becomes entitled to the dowry, is subject to the waiting period, any children born to them are the father’s, and neither is subject to penal sanction. They are then legally separated and do not inherit from each other, and the separation is an annulment of the marriage , not a divorce. Because the second marriage was lawful according to appearances, one rules regarding this marriage as one does regarding an ordinary lawful marriage : there is a dowry, a waiting period, a child that is the legitimate offspring of the father, and any penal sanction is averted. However, according to the true state of affairs, one rules regarding it as one does for an unlawful marriage: the marriage is ended, it becomes unlawful for him to have sexual intercourse with her once they know that the first husband is alive, and they may not inherit from each other as spouses otherwise would. The voiding of the contract is not a divorce, since she was never legally a spouse. There are many similar instances, like that of a woman who marries during her waiting period. Chapter on Legal Disagreement “I find scholars now and in the past disagreeing about various matters. Are they allowed to do that?” he asked. Legal disagreement, I replied, is of two types. One is forbidden, but I do not say that about the other. “What is the forbidden kind of legal disagreement?” I said: It is unlawful, for those who know of it, to disagree about any text that God used to furnish binding authority in a clear and textually explicit manner, whether in His Book or through the words of His Prophet. When such things are susceptible to speculative interpretation, however, or arrived at by analogy—and the 685 686 687 ٤٠٦ 406  0   23 4
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